For Merchants, Bitcoin Shows More Pop Than Potential

Jason Hand wears a suit he bought using Bitcoin. Merchants that accept Bitcoin are trying to attract virtual currency enthusiasts like Mr. Hand.Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Jason Hand had more money in his Bitcoin wallet than in his savings account.

So when he wanted a white linen suit for a vacation trip to Panama, he turned to Overstock.com, a discount retailer that accepted the virtual currency. The suit he selected cost about $100 — or a little more than a tenth of a Bitcoin.

“Bitcoin is essentially just online cash,” he said. “You should be able to pay for things however you want to pay for them.”

Merchants that accept Bitcoin are trying to attract virtual currency enthusiasts like Mr. Hand, 37, of Boulder, Colo. And the number of merchants has been growing.

Since January, major retailers like Overstock, the online travel booking website Expedia, the computer maker Dell and the satellite television provider Dish Network have started allowing customers to pay using the virtual currency on their websites. Bitcoin supporters view the more widespread adoption of Bitcoin by popular companies as an important step toward pushing the currency into the mainstream.

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Yet even as more retailers are beginning to embrace digital money, the number of consumers using Bitcoin to make purchases has remained small. There are benefits for merchants in offering Bitcoin as a payment option — lower processing fees rank high on the list — but some have questioned whether accepting virtual currency amounts to anything more than a marketing gimmick.

“From the store’s viewpoint, I think it’s great publicity,” said Steven Englander, a research analyst with Citigroup. “It makes you edgy.”

Despite the increase in merchants that accept Bitcoin, the number of daily Bitcoin transactions has hovered around 60,000 since the beginning of the year, according to the website Blockchain.info.

Overstock, which began taking Bitcoin as a form of payment in January, said that only about a quarter of a percent of its sales were in the virtual currency, or about $12,000 to $15,000 a day. With about $1.3 billion in total sales in 2013, Overstock was the first big-name merchant to adopt Bitcoin.

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Jason Hand with a suit he bought using Bitcoin.Credit Matthew Staver for The New York Times

Expedia, which had about $4.8 billion in revenue last year, also said that less than 1 percent of its sales had been in Bitcoin since it began accepting the currency in June. Dell, which started allowing Bitcoin payments on its website in July, declined to disclose specific figures about its Bitcoin sales but noted that its biggest transaction to date was for a server costing about $50,000, or 85 coins.

One reason Bitcoin transactions have not yet taken off, experts say, is that the virtual currency does not provide obvious benefits for customers. In many ways, it is still easier to pay with a credit card or a PayPal account than with Bitcoin, especially at retailers like coffee shops or grocery stores. Transacting in Bitcoin is also riskier because consumers are not protected against virtual currency fraud, making it a less appealing option for those mindful of the collapse of Mt. Gox, a Bitcoin trading platform that was based in Japan.

“My sense is that a few consumers try to use it as much as they can, but most consumers don’t find it nearly as convenient as using a credit card,” Mr. Englander said about the currency. “You transact in Bitcoin because you love it, not because it gives you any major advantages.”

Another potential disadvantage is that the price of a Bitcoin can be volatile. In about five years, the value of the virtual currency has gone from just a few dollars to more than $1,000. It is now trading around $500, according to the virtual currency website CoinDesk.

When Bitcoin was introduced in 2009 by an anonymous programmer, or group of programmers, it appealed to anti-establishment enthusiasts and technology buffs, who operated outside the traditional financial system. More recently, it has become more popular, particularly among investment firms and entrepreneurs. But without government regulation, many are reluctant to use the virtual currency.

For merchants, however, there is significant upside. It costs companies little to accept Bitcoin beyond first establishing a new payment channel. Processing fees for Bitcoin transactions are often much lower for retailers. When customers use a credit card or debit card, these fees can be around 3 percent. By contrast, Coinbase, a third-party payment processor that has teamed up with many of these big retailers to accept Bitcoin, charges a 1 percent processing fee after the first $1 million in sales.

The chief executive of Overstock, Patrick Byrne, estimated that it cost about $100,000 to integrate Bitcoin into the site’s payment system, pennies compared with the millions of dollars it spends on advertising, for example.

Michael Gulmann, the vice president of global product at Expedia, said: “We have costs associated with running our business. The lower we can get those costs, the better.”

It is difficult to put an exact figure on the number of merchants that accept Bitcoin, but experts say the total globally is as many as 80,000. Big-name retailers like Expedia and Overstock get more attention, but most of these companies are mom-and-pop stores.

Some say the interest among smaller businesses points to a mounting frustration with processing fees and chargebacks, which can hurt the bottom lines of local shops.

“These are the businesses that are hit hardest by credit card fees,” said Adam White, the director of business development and strategy at Coinbase. “For them, Bitcoin isn’t a ‘nice to have,’ it’s the only option for them to survive.”

Accepting Bitcoin may also be a marketing tactic. When retailers started accepting Bitcoin, a big appeal was the virtual currency’s ability to attract new customers with its novelty. Being among the first to embrace Bitcoin was an easy, relatively cheap way for companies to capitalize on interest in digital money, said Derek D. Rucker, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

“They’re not just manufacturing curiosity and interest, they’re borrowing interest,” he said about these retailers. “It’s possible they’re using their association with Bitcoin for different reasons, but clearly, it’s an attention-grabber.”

Merchants like Overstock and Dell said they experienced an initial bump in activity on their sites after announcing they would accept Bitcoin, especially after they received media attention.

Now, however, some see signs that there may be a bit of Bitcoin fatigue. Sales at Overstock, for example, have fallen considerably since its first week of Bitcoin transactions, when it had about $500,000 worth, said Mr. Byrne, Overstock’s chief executive.

“There’s a corner of the market that wanted to use Bitcoin, and this was a chance to get that piece of the market before anyone else got to it,” Mr. Byrne said. “People who accept it now aren’t going to get nearly the publicity that we did.”

Correction: August 17, 2014The byline for an article on Friday about retailers’ growing acceptance of the virtual currency Bitcoin misspelled the given name of the reporter. She is Sydney Ember, not Sidney.

A version of this article appears in print on 08/15/2014, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: For Merchants, Bitcoin Shows More Pop Than Potential.